Sunday, June 04, 2017

Full, Sparkling, Everywhere, Flowing ...

"My own experience of śaktipāta
occurred at the age of 16 through meeting a powerful and loving meditation
master. It was not the product of wishful thinking, because I didn't even
want to be there, at least on the level of the conscious mind. My mother
had persuaded me to take a two-day meditation retreat and I had acceded because
I wanted the reward she was offering me; I had neither expectation nor hope that
anything particularly magical would happen. And indeed, the whole thing
was fairly boring, though in the final meditation of the weekend, I did make a
grudging effort to be fully present in the warm, dark stillness of the
meditation room. It was nice, but nothing special, until I opened my eyes
and walked outside. I was astonished to discover that the whole world had
apparently changed. Everything was more vivid and real, and almost
sparkling. Not only that, I was feeling an incredible energy in my heart,
and it was flowing palpably between my heart and the hearts of everyone else I
could see. I call it "energy" for lack of a better word; it was a tangible
power or force, not a passive feeling, and it had the nature of exquisitely pure
love. It was connecting the hearts of all the people around me, coursing
freely in a kind of web or grid of power, entirely independent of whether the
people liked each other or not. Then I noticed it was really everywhere;
the very air around me seemed thick with it; it was undoubtedly the most "real"
thing in reality, though not perceptible with any of the five senses! It
was astonishing, and I was never the same, now that I knew this power, this love
beyond anything I had ever imagined, was a real possibility in human life."
- Christopher D. Wallis, Tantra Illuminated, 2012, p.323Tantra Illuminated: The Philosophy, History, and Practice of a Timeless Tradition
By Christopher D. Wallis, M.A. Illustrations by Ekabhumi Ellik.
Woodlands, Texas, Anusara Press, 2012. Index, endnotes, bibliography,
three appendices, 506 pages. ISBN: 978-1937104016. VSCL. In 2012, the
author was a Ph.D. candidate in Sanskrit at the University of California,
Berkeley. This book takes as its exemplar and focal point the lineages of
nondual Śaiva Tantra most clearly typified by the Kaula Trika lineage.
Written for the educated lay reader. The author shares his personal life,
his spiritual life, his practices, his yoga, within this tradition of Tantra. Tantra: Path of EcstasyBy Georg Feuerstein (1947-2012), Ph.D. Boston, Shambhala,
1998. Index,
bibliography, notes, 314 pages. ISBN: 157062304X. VSCL. An
excellent introduction to Tantra, and a great starting point for readers. I
own, and have read and reread in the last ten years nearly all of the books by
Dr. Georg Feuerstein. If my understanding is correct, Dr. Feuerstein
personally followed the path of
Vajrayana Buddhism, a Tibetan Buddhist tradition, a lineage of Tantric
Buddhism. "Tantra's body-positive approach is the direct outcome of its
integrative metaphysics according to which this world is not mere illusion but a
manifestation of the supreme Reality. If the world is real, the body must
be real as well. If the world is in essence divine, so must be the body.
If we must honor the world as a creation or an aspect of the divine Power (shakti),
we must likewise honor the body. The body is a piece of the world and, as
we shall see, the world is a piece of the body. Or, rather, when we truly
understand the body, we discover that it is the world, which in essence is
divine."
- Georg Feuerstein, Tantra: The Path of Ecstasy, p. 53 Somaesthetic Practices and TheoryTantra: Bibliography, Quotations, Links, Resources